Priority: Leavers and Matchmaking
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I love objective-based, arena combat games... I've played a ton of them throughout the years. Everything from Monday Night Combat, Bloodline Champions, Battlerite, Guild Wars 2 sPvP, Gigantic, Overwatch (to an extent) and more.
I can tell you right now that the most pressing issue on your hands (Ninja Theory) is how you handle leavers and the resulting attempt to fill teams. No amount of characters, skins or maps will bring players back if the game builds a reputation for giving leavers a free pass.
You have to decide NOW (not a couple months or years down the line) what your stance is on leavers and stick with it. I suggest taking a hard stance and making it clear that people that want to throw matches will have a very difficult time progressing in this game. You want to be vocal with this to let people know what they're getting into beforehand.
You should consider giving players incentives for remaining in an entire match and actually participating. You'll also want to look at how players that do remain when a teammate leaves are punished and how the winning team is rewarded.
Another important part is your matchmaking system. No one wants to be put in a losing game... it's the worst feeling to know the outcome is inevitable and you're just wasting time. People placed in these types of games need some sort of compensation, be it an xp modifier or extra coin. Ranked mode is a given and will need to be much stricter than casuals with matchmaking.
This is what I think your biggest challenge will be with how this game is perceived. I love the art, music, animation, gameplay (though I could do with a little more complexity in combat)... you've clearly shown you can deliver on these. You now have to prove you can make a PvP game that gives people a reason to stick it out.
I wouldn't look at your predecessors/competition, as they mostly do a terrible job of handling these issues. This means you need to shirk conventional gaming ideas and go for something that satisfies competitive players' expectations. If you try to make this a free-for-all casual fiesta, the game will surely wither away. Good luck.
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@Sol-Aethiops For me priority would definitely be fixing the lag. It is barely playable at this point.
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Team that suffer a loss of a player should gain a buff of some sort. Don't penalise the player if they left because they had a bad time. Buff the remaing players or give them an "against all odds"bonus at the end of the match based on thier time played and how long they spent under maned.
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@net3reak said in Priority: Leavers and Matchmaking:
Team that suffer a loss of a player should gain a buff of some sort. Don't penalise the player if they left because they had a bad time. Buff the remaing players or give them an "against all odds"bonus at the end of the match based on thier time played and how long they spent under maned.
A buff wouldn't really work though... not in ranked anyway. What's the use of builds if enemy team gets buffed because of a dropper? That's punishing the winning team. People may not like it, especially people with bad internet connections, but the only truly fair solution is to punish leavers, regardless of the reason. If you have bad internet, this may not be the game for you... stick to casual. If you have low emotional IQ, there's always Bejeweled.
Too many games have died because their devs are scared to deal properly with griefers. Nip that **** in the bud from the beginning and those kind of players will stay away. All the better.
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I don't see it mentioned here but another issue is the start of game timer happening before matches are filled. Please don't start matches until both teams are full up. I literally had three games where I was by myself and had to quit out because at 10 seconds it was still just me vs. four players. I think the best leaver punishments are dodge timers. Can't rejoin for x, xx, and xxx time scaling depending on the number of offenses in the same x hours or day. Also I honestly think in ranked if they have leavers just do like league where the enemy team gets a w but your team gets the match doesn't count result if it's in like the first five minutes but if thats the case then you can not repopulate the match with people following leaves.
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@The-Doubtless said in Priority: Leavers and Matchmaking:
I don't see it mentioned here but another issue is the start of game timer happening before matches are filled. Please don't start matches until both teams are full up. I literally had three games where I was by myself and had to quit out because at 10 seconds it was still just me vs. four players. I think the best leaver punishments are dodge timers. Can't rejoin for x, xx, and xxx time scaling depending on the number of offenses in the same x hours or day. Also I honestly think in ranked if they have leavers just do like league where the enemy team gets a w but your team gets the match doesn't count result if it's in like the first five minutes but if thats the case then you can not repopulate the match with people following leaves.
This is a huge issue to me too. I feel like they have time to create a permanent stance on leavers since I doubt we are playing the competitive ruleset for the game but it definitely sucks to start a lopsided game.
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I strongly agree with the OP. Making this an easily accessible game to thousands of players via Xbox Game Pass is a very smart way to market the game, but this will inevitably result in an influx of casual, semi-sorta interested players who will play for a brief time and then drop out in a heartbeat. Given this game is right around the corner and early impressions are critical in any field, I believe a firm stance on all aspects of matchmaking need to be established out of the gate.
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@ShadoWawker I’ve heard and seen the lag but haven’t noticed it enough to mention anything about it. For me it usually lags like towards the beginning for about 2 seconds then doesn’t do it for the rest of the game. Maybe it could be your connection?
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@Chiefamese Because the lag is probabily your connection. I played the game, and my friends also played the game. We all live in different places, and not one of us had any lag.
Anyway, The game needs to punish leavers heavily. A 15 minute ban would be good for those that leave a game.
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Dude
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It’s beta, not competitive. It’s to find bugs and make sure servers are stable. It’s not to get people to be good in competitively. I had the game several times said to reconnect my controller when it’s still on. When I turned off the controller and turn it back on (so that the game can register the controller getting turned on due to not being able to hit “A” button while it was still on), it kicked me off the game because it thought I was logging into a new character.
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It’s not ranked games, meaning it’s causal. Games are found fast and they’re fast games. If someone leaves, it could be personal reasons or internet or even the bug I mentioned above, not just for grieving. All this was is to have fun causally, find bugs, and stabilizing the servers.
If you’re butthurt about this already, then stop playing games because obviously you can’t handle fun and causal.
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From today's patch:
Leaver Penalty
Bleeding Edge is a competitive multiplayer fighter where working together as a team is vital if you wish to achieve victory, we understand how players quitting matches can be detrimental to your experience which is why we have been reviewing our leaver penalty system.
Quitting in the middle of a game counts as a loss, and you miss out on end game rewards. Additionally, quitters will incur a leaver penalty.
Players with an active leaver penalty prioritise matchmaking with other leavers and are more likely to backfill into games with missing players. This means by quitting a match before it finishes you are more likely to join other matches in progress, and less likely to join a match that has just started. You are also unable to earn rewards while the leaver penalty is active. Completing 3 matches clears the penalty.
Thank you, Ninja Theory! I'm happy with this. Players will now think twice about dropping from games if they care for progression.
Requiring them to finish 3 matches to clear the penalty is good incentive to stay in games to the end. I also like the idea of having leavers be prioritized for backfill as this gives them a taste of their own medicine.All that's needed now is for you to stand your ground and not let the impending tears sway you to remove or lighten this system. Gamers need to grow up and realize they can't waste other peoples' time without consequence.
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@Sol-Aethiops Also very happy with this. It's a good system that's fair. Someone said 15 min ban, which is a bit excessive for how short the games are, so I prefer something like this. Speaking of tears... I see some in this thread. Won't bother with those though, it's a shame we even have to explain something so basic and fundamental to competitive games at this point.
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how would you know, or Ninja Theory, or microsoft, that your game lagged you out, or you crashed, or it dashboarded, or you intentionally pulled the plug, and raged quit ??? thats the problem with all games. there's no telling.
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my game crashed 8-10 times during 40 hours. but they say in the patch notes that they fixed it... i had games, like 2 maybe 3 games, where i was the only one, or it was 2v4 for the longest, and my other teammate quit which resulted in 1v4, so i had to quit. this is not just bleeding edge's problem.. ITS YOUR PROBLEM.. the community, and the shit gamers that are out there compared to 10-15 years ago... people had balls back then and they would stand and fight , and not be despaired because we're a man down... now kids are so freaking dumb and uneducated they get sad and cry when they think,,, THINK, they don't have any advantage...
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and they had this same penalty in the alpha,,, due to some bugs in beta, they removed the penalty until they were fixed,, see patch notes beta 2.... so not sure what this OP is crying over about.
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The matchmaking is really broken the way it is...
I just got put in 4 losing games IN A ROW... 4 matches that I could do nothing to change the outcome...
In one of them I entered just to see the word DEFEAT... Serioysly, I entered and imediatly after I saw thw word DEFEAT... And this counts as a Defeat in my history... It is ridiculous.
No one wants to play a losing game... So if you put a guy in a losing game, the least you can do is not to count that loss to him... Sometimes we stick around only to try to help... But if quiters have no real punishment, is just easier to quit these games, and those people will keep doing it.
I'm seriously thinking about quiting this game as long as it keeps like this. Not fun at all to play a match like that
